In a known approach similar to that of a filing system, search techniques using keywords, including internet keyword searches, are often employed to group related electronically encoded items such as textual documents, photographs, and web pages.
In the filing system approach, distinct folders are first created for those categories of interest. Then the various electronically encoded items are manually partitioned into the folders. In an alternative to the filing system, the electronically encoded items are left as a single group but with appropriate textual keywords attached to individual electronically encoded items. To collect a related group of electronically encoded items, a search utilizing a keyword of interest is then performed. In some cases, it is necessary to manually create and associate keywords to the electronically encoded items.
In contrast to the keyword search an internet keyword search involves two distinct stages. First a keyword search is made for the occurrence of specified keywords in the objects of the search, i.e., the web pages on the internet. In the second stage of the internet search, web pages associated with the specified keywords are ranked according to predetermine criteria. The frequency with which other web pages hyper-link to the page under consideration is often used as a criterion for ranking a web page. In using this criterion, it is assumed that an “important” web page will usually have numerous other pages “pointing” to it. This criterion has proven to be very informative. An internet search using it is often successful in parsing out the few web pages that are really relevant even when keyword queries are sparse or non-specific.